Kamala Harris has signalled a major shift in US’s Gaza policy, with the presidential hopeful telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seal a peace deal, AFP reports.

Ripping up outgoing President Joe Biden’s playbook of mostly behind-the-scenes pressure on Israel, the vice president said after meeting Netanyahu that it was time to end the “devastating” conflict.

“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time,” Harris told reporters.

“We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”

The 59-year-old Democratic presidential nominee said she pressed Netanyahu on the dire situation in the “frank” meeting.

She said she “expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians”.